The Wrong Hand

by Jane Jago

  Jane Jago

  * * *

  THE WRONG HAND

  Contents

  Prologue

  Choices

  Clues

  Habits

  Shame

  Doubts

  History

  Chemistry

  Ghosts

  Code Blue

  Wanted

  Names

  Voices

  Truth

  Fruits

  Living

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Reading Group Discussion Questions

  Follow Penguin

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  The Wrong Hand

  Jane Jago was born in Sydney Australia in 1961. Originally trained as a printmaker, she began writing whilst raising a family. She has a long-standing interest in exploring the shadow aspect of human nature and in developmental psychology. Passionate about the protection of children and their right to a childhood, The Wrong Hand is her first novel.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Birth is a lottery. Some children are born into loving, supportive families and are given the best of starts; some inherit a legacy of dysfunction, or worse. The Wrong Hand focusses on the aftermath of a terrible tragedy that challenges our very idea of childhood innocence. In an age of social reform, where rehabilitation, redemption and forgiveness are promoted for all but the very worst of adult offenders, violence by children confronts one of our most deeply held taboos, and continues to confound our understanding. Just what influences warp and so desensitise a child’s psyche that they can conceive of extreme violence?

  It is a sad fact of living that even happy families cannot always protect the children they love. Losing a child under any circumstances is something we all hope we will never have to face. But how does a parent begin to grieve for such a loss when even their sacred memories have been defiled? When they are not left to grieve in private and in peace?

  This book is my exploration of these questions: of how such things can happen; of the irrevocable and long-lasting price paid by the victims, and my attempt to comprehend what drives the best and worst in us all. It is my belief that there is no ‘them’, there is only ‘us’.

  Jane Jago, 2016

  To my sons

  Prologue

  1993

  It was a Sunday when they found him. Somewhere a truck’s brakes shuddered violently; a siren wailed. The woman moved her head instinctively in the direction of the sound, but her eyes registered nothing of the scene outside the window. In the street below, a marked van forged its way from the building’s car park across the crawling lanes of city-bound traffic and onto the motorway. Rain on the glass refracted the prisms of coloured light as they bled slowly away into the gathering evening.

  The woman looked blankly at the uniformed officer who sat watchfully beside her. The constable’s face was white and pinched, but she attempted a weak smile and patted the woman’s hand. The woman pulled it away. She gripped her seat and began to rock slowly back and forth, back and forth, back and forth until approaching footsteps on the polished linoleum interrupted her rhythm. She stood up and looked towards the doorway.

  Two men hesitated at the threshold, a detective with a bewildered man draped in a grey blanket, whom he gently ushered forward.

  The woman scanned his face. ‘It’s not Benjamin, is it?’ She grabbed the man’s wrists. ‘I know it’s not him.’

  He was unable to speak.

  ‘Mathew! Say it’s not him!’ She pressed her face against his chest, then slid slowly to her knees.

  Choices

  ‘For what has been determined must take place.’

  Danny, Holroyd House, Juvenile Corrections, 2001

  ‘Make a list of ten possible names you like.’

  ‘Why?

  ‘Why do you think, Danny?’

  ‘I dunno. Is it a game?’

  ‘No, it’s not a game. We’ve been talking about it for a long time now.’

  ‘A new name? You want me to choose it?’

  ‘We want your ideas.’

  ‘I don’t know ten names.’

  Dr Harmina Lepik smiled tolerantly. Everyone knew ten names. She slid a slim volume across the desk. ‘Take this back with you to your room and have a look through it.’

  ‘A Thousand Names for Your Baby.’ Danny read the title aloud.

  ‘If you have a particular favourite, put it at the top of the list,’ said Dr Lepik. ‘You have the chance to reinvent yourself, Danny,’ she added, serious now. ‘Do you understand?’

  He did.

  Back in his room, after shutdown, he turned the pages of the little book incredulously. Aaron, Abbott, Abel, Abner, Abraham, Adam, Addison . . . What sort of names were these? Aaron – Hebrew, enlightened. Barry, Beau, Belarmino . . . Bloody hell. Benjamin, Bill, Bertrand, Bobby, Barendon, Bradley, Brigham, Byron . . . No way. Carl, Cameron, Casey, Chadwick . . . He was getting bored now. He bored easily. Dallas, Damon . . . He continued until his finger slid across the familiar Daniel – Judged by God. Darcy, David, Dean, Dexter, Dirk, Dudley . . .

  ‘Dudley Simpson,’ he said out loud. Edward . . . Frederick . . . Gabriel, Garth, Gavin, Gaylord – Gaylord! He almost wet himself laughing. George, Gerald, Glen . . .

  He picked up a pen and began to scribble down names that either amused or interested him. He went through the entire alphabet, until his page was full of names. He tore it off. On the next page he wrote ‘Daniel Simpson’. He sorted the letters of his name alphabetically. He tried to come up with an anagram, finally settling on the improbable ‘Neil Dimsap’.

  Unimpressed with his efforts, he allowed his eyes to wander around the familiar room. He’d only been in it for a week but it was identical to all the rooms he had been in over the last seven years. An unremarkable single bed under a permanently closed window, a built-in wardrobe, a bare desk with drawers and a shelf full of books. The walls were a sickly blue, decorated only with a few sagging football posters and one of a naked girl draped across a surfboard, which ‘they’ considered healthy – otherwise it wouldn’t have survived the move from the last room to this one.

  The moves happened without warning, at any time in the daily routine. He might have just finished classes or duties when he was directed by a ward supervisor to a newly allocated room, either close by or in another wing. When he entered it, the new room would be exactly as he had left the other, with all his things in place. He had been told that the moves were a precaution designed to protect him from other boys, who might wish to harm him, but the unspoken reason was that the regular moves enabled his guards to search his room and ensure that he hadn’t secreted some means of harming himself. After all these years the silly bastards still thought he meant to do himself in. Suicide had never crossed his mind.

  He had once hidden a pair of small blades he had taken out of a plastic pencil-sharpener (stolen from the Centre’s library) by unscrewing the wardrobe-door knob and sliding the blades behind the chrome collar. He’d done it just in case he wanted something small and sharp during the hours he spent in his room. A few weeks later he was moved again and wouldn’t have given the matter another thought, but for his weekly session with Dr Lepik.

  From the moment he’d gone in he’d known something was wrong. Usually she was sitting at the table and waited for him to settle into his chair before she started the warm-up questions – ‘How are you, Danny? How has your week been?’ He would tell her what he had been studying, how he had been feeling, whom he had been interacting with and if he had had any problems. Often he was stirred up so much by the process of communicating that he told her much more than he had planned to. That day she was standing by the window, looking out, not acknowledging his arrival.

  He pulled
out his chair and sat down. The doctor remained silent, and Danny felt increasingly uncomfortable. In his world other people spoke first and then he could judge where the traps might lie. Harmina Lepik turned around and gazed at him for several seconds. If she didn’t greet him, he would sit there for a full hour without speaking. Silence was his one remaining weapon.

  ‘Danny,’ she said. ‘How are you feeling about things?’

  ‘Things?’ asked Danny, unwilling to depart from the routine.

  ‘Life, Danny, the future, what plans do you have?’

  This was the stupidest question he’d heard for a while, even from her, so stupid it almost made him angry. Plans? Future? What future? What did she expect him to fucking say?

  ‘I haven’t got any plans. It wouldn’t matter if I did. I do what I’m told.’

  ‘We all have plans, Danny, no matter where we find ourselves . . . If we don’t like where we are, sometimes we plan how to get out.’

  Get out? What was she on? Maybe she could get out and go home every night. ‘You think I’m going to try and escape from prison?’

  ‘This is not a prison, Danny.’

  ‘Whatever you call it then – juvenile detention centre, secure unit.’

  ‘There are, of course, many ways to escape.’

  ‘Are there?’ I wish you’d tell me what they are.

  ‘Danny, you’re nearly eighteen. You won’t be here for ever. It’s very possible you’ll be released soon.’ He’d heard this line before and regarded it with suspicion. His mother, the lawyer and the doctor seemed to believe it but he wasn’t sure he wanted to let himself accept it, or even if he wanted it to happen. The thought of being released made him feel more afraid than he had felt for a long time.

  ‘You must not give up. You did a terrible thing, but you deserve another chance.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, waiting for the punch line.

  ‘Remorse is useful . . .’

  Remorse? Who mentioned remorse? He looked back blankly.

  ‘So many people have been hurt by what happened. Harming yourself wouldn’t change that, only add to it.’

  He said nothing. He had no idea what to say – she was talking crap again.

  ‘Have you thought about harming yourself?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you have hopes for the future? Dreams?’

  ‘What would be the point?’

  ‘Well, that’s what I want to talk about. Just imagine for a minute the future you would plan for yourself if there were no obstacles.’

  ‘A future I won’t get to have.’

  ‘Put the obstacles aside and just try to imagine . . . Where would you go? What type of work would you do?’

  ‘None.’

  The doctor shrugged. ‘Keep going. What would you do with yourself?’

  Another of her pointless exercises, he thought. ‘I’d get a Ferrari and a cool flat in the city, in one of those intercom buildings, or cruise around on a motorbike.’

  She looked at him intently, waiting for more.

  ‘I’d go to football on the weekend and maybe do some work, like with computers or something, or be a chauffeur for someone, drive around in a hot car paid for by somebody else.’

  ‘What about other people?’

  ‘Other people?’

  ‘In your future do you have a girlfriend? Are you married?’

  ‘Might have a girlfriend – yeah, one with big tits who likes to fuck a lot.’ He wasn’t allowed to talk like that anywhere else but you could get away with it in your therapy.

  Harmina Lepik barely registered the remark or that Danny was staring directly at her breasts as he spoke. ‘How does she feel about you?’ she asked.

  ‘Who cares?’

  ‘Well, she might?’

  ‘Then I’d get a new one. I don’t know.’

  ‘What about friends?’

  ‘Yeah, until they find out about me.’

  ‘Does that depress you?’

  ‘No, they can get fucked.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear you at least have some thoughts on the future, thoughts not really so different from other teenagers, Danny. Other young people your age, with far fewer obstacles standing in their way, often suffer doubts about themselves, and many normal teenagers go through periods of depression.’

  ‘Yeah? I’m glad I’m not normal, then.’

  Harmina reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out something small. ‘I believe you were moved again, Danny.’

  ‘They do it just to irritate me.’

  ‘You were upset?’

  ‘No. All the rooms are the same.’

  ‘You don’t mind your things being interfered with?’

  ‘They always put them back.’

  ‘Do they?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Dr Lepik opened her hand ‘Danny, these were found hidden in your last room.’ Two small blades lay in the hand she held out to him.

  He recognized them immediately and laughed.

  ‘What were you keeping them for?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did you intend to harm yourself?’

  He looked at her with contempt.

  ‘Or to harm anyone else?

  ‘What – with those? They’re from a pencil sharpener.’

  ‘Why did you take them?’

  ‘I don’t know. I get tired of having to ask for everything. I just hid them for a joke.’

  ‘You wanted us to think you were a danger to yourself.’

  ‘No, I just hid them, so I could sharpen a pencil or cut paper if I felt like it. Big deal! I didn’t have a plan.’

  She put the objects back into her pocket and sat down. He thought he could tell from the changed expression on her face that she believed him. ‘I’m pleased we’ve had this discussion, Danny, and that we’ve focused on at least some possibilities for the future.’

  Whatever advice Dr Lepik had offered the administrators, the moves had continued. His custodians could not afford to take chances. It was their mission to protect Danny Simpson from the many threats directed against him. Also, a dead juvenile wasn’t good for the records. A dead juvenile many wanted dead would create a very bad stink indeed.

  Back in his room, Danny made his list. In a neat hand he printed a single column of names. He began to enjoy it, scribbling out some of his first selections, then replacing them with new ones until, finally, only ten remained.

  Within a week his lawyer had come to the Centre with papers to sign about his release. Release: the very word made his palms sweat. The following Wednesday his mother arrived unexpectedly with a letter. Before she had even sat down in the visitors’ room, he knew that a day had been named. An ashen-faced Debbie Simpson, hands shaking, read the letter aloud. Gone was all the girlish bravado with which she had reassured him while he had been locked up. ‘The lawyers will work something out, Danny, they will, you’ll see. You’ll be out soon. You’ll be able to come home. They won’t send you to an adult prison when you turn eighteen. The lawyer’s sure of that. Don’t you worry, Danny.’

  Don’t worry. Don’t worry because, beneath the surface, she wouldn’t. After seven years, he was lucky if she made the journey to visit him three times in a year. When the initial drama of the trial had subsided, and she had discovered the dangerous difference between infamy and fame, she had been horrified by the violence of the public reaction against her.

  Sitting across from him, clutching the long-awaited letter, Danny could see she was afraid – afraid for herself. She was barely able to look at him.

  Oh, it was all right for Danny! Safely tucked away in custody while she was spat on in the street. He’d ruined her life, might as well have put a knife straight through her heart – all the moves, the hate mail, his brother’s suicide . . . He’d fucked them all up. Sure she wasn’t a saint, she wasn’t the greatest mother in the world, but she’d done her best. It wasn’t her fault: he was sick, a psychopath. None of the others had done anything like this . . . barely
eleven years old!

  He’d never been normal: from the moment they’d given him to her, there had been something unnatural about him, something you couldn’t feel for. It wasn’t her fault! She hadn’t committed the crime! And now he was coming out and it would happen all over again – more moves, more hate mail.

  Not this time, not now, not when she’d finally got it together. Not now she finally had a man worth more than a pinch of shit in her life. She couldn’t do it. Danny would have to make it alone.

  When she said goodbye and kissed him feebly, guilty tears in her eyes, Danny guessed what his mother already knew for certain: he would never set eyes on her again.

  Geoffrey, of course, had been their idea, like all the rest of it. Sure they had given him ‘choices’. No life or a life; choices between towns he had never heard of and towns he never wanted to see; choices between Duncan, Brendan and Geoffrey . . . After a while he realized that when they gave him any choice at all, it was because there really was none.

  ‘Geoffrey! Geoffrey wasn’t even on my list,’ he cried.

  ‘I don’t know about that, Danny.’

  ‘Dr Lepik got me to write a list of names.’

  ‘Probably to eliminate any that you might have chosen for yourself. Other people who know something about you might make the same associations as you did.’

  Danny was seething. They’d done it to him again – lured him out from cover and ambushed him. Every fucking time. ‘Why didn’t they tell me that?’

  ‘Danny, I think the answer to that is pretty obvious.’

  ‘I don’t want to be called Geoffrey. What sort of a name is that?’

  Jonathan Fisher’s smile vanished. He fixed Danny with a hard look. ‘I can assure you, Geoffrey, that there are a good many more important things for you to worry about than the flavour of your name. Get used to it. We still have to wade through all this,’ he said, tapping the substantial pile of documents on the desk between them.

  Danny was starting to feel sick. He didn’t like the parole officer. So close to his release date, it distressed him to have to open up with someone new.